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One of our firm's partners who specializes in Advisory, Best
Practices, LBO, and Government Relations has offered to chime in and post about
email etiquette. This is the first time I've received this offer from within
our firm, and I'm happy to consider extending this invitation to all of our
partners. Thus we are starting this new series of posts for my business
etiquette series about email etiquette. You may recall in my first business
etiquette posting, I argued that about 99% of people in the world do not do
business like I do. I feel the same regarding email communication. I hope you
enjoy my partner's post (within quotes).

"Good business is predicated on clear and effective communication and
email is the primary mode by which business is conducted. Yet corporations,
government agencies and educational institutions stand on the sidelines and do
little to train workers and students on the fundamentals of email etiquette.
CEO's, Cabinet officials and University President's should take heed -
effective communication makes money, solidifies policy and equips students with
real-life professional tools.

The facts are staggering: 40 billion person-to-person emails are exchanged per
day and 30 percent of a workday is spent creating, reading, and responding to messages
for the AVERAGE email user. As Nora Ephron noted, "...email is life
altering. It's shorthand. Cut to the chase. Get to the point. It takes five
seconds to accomplish in an email message something that takes five minutes on the telephone." In other words,
email is the efficient de-humanizer. You can run a business from a Blackberry
while lounging in the Caribbean and never have
human contact with your business partner. Maybe so, but here's some breaking
news - practicing email etiquette enhances effective communication which
translates into dollars, no matter if the intended email recipient is a
continent away or in the adjacent cube.

Part II of this series will drill into the fundamental principles of email
etiquette. Before we get there, let me ask you a few questions in order to take
your email pulse:

* How much time do you waste
decoding a poorly written email?
* How often are you unnecessarily
copied on an email message?
* How often do you use email to
say one or two words, such as "ok" or "thank you?"
* How often do you proofread an
email before sending it?
* How often do you receive an
email with an attachment but no text in the email body?

Is your pulse admitting guilt? I bet. It's common to experience these
scenarios, especially staring at the screen to decipher an unintelligible
email. I suspect it happens to you multiple times a week. I call it the lost in
translation look, like the one experienced by Bill Murray while he sits on a
Tokyo hotel bed in Sofia Coppola's thoughtful film Lost in Translation - click http://www.lost-in-translation.com/
to see the image.

Murray's
mid-life angst, anxiety and earnest efforts to navigate the uniqueness of
Japanese culture often gave him pause. Similarly, the current email divide
should cause reflection since the development of email tools is outpacing our
ability to use them effectively. Moore's
Law and other innovative principles have flattened the world and radically altered society. When will we develop the skills and discipline to
use these tools to communicate more effectively?"

It's been a while since I posted about KKR's S-1 filing about a year ago. If you haven't heard the firm is finally going to go public through a merger of its Amsterdam listed fund. Apparently KKR is going to take over its listed fund then simultaneously delist from the Amsterdam exchange and list on the NYSE. This is truly a buyout way of going public akin to a reverse merger.

It is interesting that the buyout occurs as the value of the listed fund is significantly below the original offering price. Clearly, this is KKR's way of going public despite what appears to be a hostile environment for financial firms and in particular private equity firms. Just look at the value of Blackstone, Carlyle's listed fund, and some hedge funds such as Fortress. I'm not going to say I told you so, but here are some thoughts about KKR going public. I still believe that going public is a mistake and that private equity should stay private.

As most CXO-level people will attest, being a CEO of a public company is not fun. You have to report to shareholders. You have to report to the Street. You are forever a public person, unable to hide in private.

From a financial point of view, there really should only be one time to go public - when the market multiple is extremely high, higher than you would attain from a buyer in the private market - clearly this is not that environment for a financial firm.

I still will tip my hats off to the guys at KKR -they have cajones. Perhaps they are just taking advantage of another buyout with great value - it just happens to be their own fund that they are buying out.